Nuga Eden Tangalle — Hotel in Sri Lanka

AVOID THIS PLACE

My wife and I stayed here for two nights in the treehouse recently, upon arrival everything was lovely, the staff were all very kind, the food was great and the pool was also great. When we got into our room it wasn't quite what we expected. First of all the toilet was within the room right next to the bed and only covered by a thin sheet, which offered no privacy nor protection from odors, the shower wouldn't get hot, only one power point in the whole room worked, only one light worked, the TV didn't work, which we weren't too bothered about but still, the room had no working air conditioning, the fan would only work if it was in a certain position which was actually pointing away from the bed and out onto the balcony, kind of useless. All the bug netting was insecure and broken throughout the room so we had cockroaches, spiders and squirrels coming into our room whenever they could. That night we decided to get our laundry done and go to sleep. The next day we rented a scooter from the hotel to go around town for $13 aud which we thought was a great price. While we were scooting about the tire failed, either it went flat or it came off the rim I'm not sure as it was in shoddy condition to begin with. We walked the scooter back up to the hotel and told them what had happened, they told us to sit in the lobby and that it's okay and they will have somebody fix it, anyway 2 hours later nothing had been done, we weren't offered another scooter to take or any transportation to get into town for a lunch we had booked, we got up to leave and were then told a complimentary tuk tuk had been arranged for us by the hotel to take us to lunch. 20 minutes later the tuk tuk arrived and took us to which was now dinner, but before letting us out asked us to pay, we said that we thought the hotel was fixing this up for us but he said he didn't know anything about it, angrily we got out and had dinner. We went back to the hotel picked up our laundry and went to bed. The next day when we went to check out we were shown the bill which included the tire repair, unbeknownst to us we had to foot the $30 bill for the failed tire which we though was going to be covered by the hotel, at no point during the 2 hour wait or the rest of the day were we told we would be covering it. I went to get my wallet from my bag and noticed that the laundry that we had done wasn't actually clean by any stretch of the imagination and they seemed dirtier than when we sent them off, on-top of that one of the sleeves of my new shirt was nearly completely ripped off. I brought this to the attention of the hotel management and he said I was wrong and that it was like that before I sent it to get cleaned. It couldn't have been as the shirt was 3 days old, I literally purchased it 3 days ago brand new. This experience has left a very bad taste in my mouth, on-top of our room not being what was advertised we were deceived into paying for a tire that we can't be sure we were responsible for and paying for laundry that wasn't clean, and laundry that ruined a new shirt I bought, we were offered no refund and no apologies by any of the staff including the owner of the hotel who just stood there and shrugged his shoulders. They also tried to charge us for the full days use of the scooter when we barely got 4 hours use out of it. Please avoid this place as there are better hotels around for a better price that won't lie...

We stayed at the tree house of this small and cozy resort. It has been my dream for a long time to stay in a tree house, so this was an excellent opportunity to combine that with a nice beach holiday. Some insights that we got from our stay at the resort:

The tree house is very high up in the tree, so keep that in mind if you don't feel comfortable with height.

It sits on a tree and two concrete pillars, so I guess it should be very stable, but still the tree house moves with the wind and makes according creaking noise.

It is very much in the nature, even though they really tried to close every hole with mosquito nets, there is still a chance to meet spiders, a baby gecko and a cockroach.

You find a shower, a tub and a toilet up there. Everything works basically well, but there was an unpleasant smell from the sink. Tip: close the washing basin, put a glass into the shower sink to cover it.

The toilet is separated from the rest of the room only via a curtain, which you can actually not really close when you are sitting on it. So you can see this holiday as a chance to get to a even more intimate stage in your relationship.

The resort has a very nice pool, plenty of couches and a restaurant that offers decent food. The breakfast included traditional food like Rotti, dal, curd but also pancakes, toasted bread, jelly, scrumbled eggs and sausages. They also provide you with fresh fruits. Only negative here: we stayed four nights and the breakfast offer never changed.

Close to the resort there was a beautiful beach in a rather wind-protected lagoon with very few people. We always got couches under an umbrella. You can always have drinks and food at the three nearby restaurants but they never bother you to order something. The only negative about it that you have to walk there about 100 meters on a really, really busy and polluted road.

The hotel provides free Internet, which was generally working OK (if a bit slow). Reception in the tree house is rather low, one phone had issues getting the WiFi signal there.

If this is OK for you, you will have an excellent stay at the tree house of Nuga...

NOTHING LIKE THE ONLINE PHOTOS - AVOID! Despite booking a $60 room with a balcony, and despite the fact the hotel was virtually empty, we were shuffled into a horridly small and cramped room on the ground floor with limited natural light. The room was dark and dingy, and shockingly backed onto the dirty staff toilet and hotel generator. It looked NOTHING like the images you see online. I have no idea why they chose to put us here!! We immediately asked the female receptionist if we could move to a nicer room, but she wouldn't allow us to do so free of charge, said we would have to upgrade to "deluxe" to get the room features we were promised in our booking (balcony)/anything that remotely resembled the online photos. Totally unacceptable behaviour.

On top of this, general cleanliness was lacking (hairs on sheets and towels, etc), the locks on the doors were shoddy and a real pain to close/open, so you could spend 5 minutes just trying to get in and out of your room, the WiFi was also nonexistent. It's also next to a main road, making it noisy 24/7 and difficult/dangerous to access beach (no footpaths).

Only redeemable features were the fact that despite broken sunbeds we had the pool to ourselves due to lack of other guests, and that we were walking distance (2 minutes) from the amazing Chanika restaurant, which turned out to be the best food we ate during our 3 weeks in Sri Lanka. Also, with the exception of the receptionist who ruined our experience, the staff are mostly very sweet and friendly, particularly Lakmal who was kind and helpful.

We stayed in two rooms, including one 'deluxe upgrade', both were shoddy and substandard but they will try to put you in the worst room they have, outright refuse, ask to speak to the manager, refuse to pay for any upgrade. Whilst all substandard, some rooms are better than others so...